Reign (Supergirl)
Samantha "Sam" Arias, also known as the Worldkiller leader Reign, is the main antagonist of the CW superhero TV series, Supergirl's third season. She is a powerful, genetically-altered Kryptonian with a split personality disorder, with her civilian persona being a loving single mother to her daughter Ruby, and her other persona being a ruthless vigilante aimed at finding the other Worldkillers and judging which criminals live and which ones die. Reign was created by a Dark Kryptonian Priestess, Selena. She is also the archenemy of Supergirl and after absorbing her sisters' powers, she also becomes one of her most powerful adversaries yet. She is portrayed by Odette Annable. Personality As Samantha Arias Although Sam is a single mother, she does her very best to support her daughter, Ruby, who is the most important person to her in the world. She is very nice and caring, and has a motherly air to her. She is also a very strong woman, loyal to people who are close to her, especially Lena Luthor, besides her own daughter, responsible to any fault she makes, quite sociable and can hold her own in mental battles against businessmen such as Morgan Edge. She has a high-level intellect, and has enough business knowledge to run L-Corp flawlessly. According to her Reign persona herself, Sam’s character is stronger than her Worldkiller persona initially dismissed — expressed by Sam taking cumulatively longer periods of control over herself and, in turn, increasingly suppressing Reign to keep her from emerging for just as long in the process, causing her to occasionally miss out or be late on summons sent out to her by the hologram from her Fortress — hinting a substantial sense of individuality on the part of Sam. After the Worldkiller went up against Psi, it was seen that Sam’s greatest dread would be to lose Ruby forever. She later affirms to her closest circle of friends that she fears the thought of Ruby losing her mother and thus be left alone by herself in the world just as much. Upon Lena realizing Sam’s hidden Worldkiller nature and bringing it up to the latter, complete with evidence — both circumstantial and trial-based — that the Luthor collected to back up her own suspicions on Samantha’s disturbing condition, Sam was instantly in denial at the very thought of how a seemingly ordinary person and frail human being like herself could be anything like the near-unstoppable alien zealot terrorizing criminality and even brutalized Supergirl in the wake of her inhumane vigilantism. And with Lena maintaining her claims to her employee’s extra-terrestrial identity, a perturbed Sam accuses her employer of only thinking so because assuming the worst of people, such to the point of actually doubting their humanity, is what Luthors apparently and ultimately do, making Lena herself no different to the rest of her infamous family. This shows that even Sam, as herself, has her limits for people who fail her in her day-to-day civilian life. As Reign Due to her forced mental programming operating on her as Reign, Sam becomes an exaggerated polar opposite of everything she is, while her Worldkiller persona remains inactive in her default state, for the periods and duration where Reign remains in control: a brutal vigilante who indiscriminately kills anyone she sees as an evil-doer in order to further her goal of ruling the world, and will react expediently cold and silently murderous whenever she comes across the said people or catch knowledge of such. She is cruel, sadistic and ruthless towards anyone who stands in her way. She is also egotistical; even though she doesn't actually see herself as a "god" or a "devil", she sees herself as "truth", "judgment", "death" and an executor of justice. Thus, her eventual dominion is inevitable and this causes her to also view those who say or stand otherwise as obstructing targets to her goal. She believes all of her actions are intended to spread justice to all those who deserve it. She also perceives that humanity has ruined their world and they must all be judged by her. Despite her ruthlessness, she is not above offering prey whom she sees as her equal a chance to stand down, like how she offered Supergirl to do so (threatening to subject the latter "into purgatory" if she chooses to stand in Reign’s way) and was perhaps a hint disappointed when the latter refuses and even responded defiantly, making the disguised (and mentally-overridden) Samantha realize that she had to manhandle her fellow Kryptonian for her insolence. But despite all of her negative drives and overzealous conviction, it would seem that Sam — as Reign — still retains vestiges of her civilian persona in that she has been known to simply leave be or tolerate those whom she is familiar with as Sam, even if they directly oppose her; this was made apparent when she smiled in amusement after Lena, her civilian boss and friend, refused to comply when Reign came to deliver her message to the world via CatCo’s broadcast, rather than viewed the human as a standing obstacle to the cleansing that she was trying to effect (and the Worldkiller would have killed her, just for that, on the most recent instructions received from the Fortress of Sanctuary) upon Earth, but went on with her purpose anyway and left Lena unharmed. Additionally, she rapidly took over and went immediately after Morgan Edge upon Sam learning that Edge staged an assault against Lena from days prior, hinting a protective (if not fiercely territorial) side of herself even as Reign. Reign also later had shown great respect for Sam and wants her to embrace with her dark side as "they" could have power and whatever they desired. Though this leniency of sorts oddly did not prevent her from attempting to go after Alex (whom Sam is also reasonably acquainted with) when the latter, J’onn and several of the D.E.O. operatives staged a futile ambush against the Worldkiller — and had to be physically stopped by the Martian himself. Reign would later come close to killing Alex, knocking the latter down then stepping over to place a foot upon Alex’s chest (though to be fair, at both confrontations, Alex clearly identified herself as Reign’s enemy when she forced Green Kryptonite around the Worldkiller’s neck to bring the masked Sam down during first and then repeatedly fired several ineffective shots, in the second, with her gun at the latter) after telling the agent that she’ll take her life then and there — only stopping at the beseech of Julia, who offers to be taken and become Purity completely on the condition that Alex was allowed to live. The fact that Reign agreed to Julia’s terms shows an honorable aspect on the part of the former not obligated to carry out every will of the Fortress of Sanctuary and would also not do anything as drastic as taking another’s life without sufficient motive. As Reign, Sam speaks in a disguised tone that ends her sentences in a reverberating manner. Powers and Abilities Powers *'Dark magic-empowered Kryptonian physiology': While her Kryptonian makes her capabilities superior to a normal human's, due to the dark magic enhancements, Sam's powers are naturally greater than any normal solar-powered Kryptonian. According to a Kryptonian hologram, Sam as Reign has powers that are more advanced and potent than Supergirl, and possibly Superman. But, it is likely that she is just as powerful as him, as she has been on Earth for at least 35 years; the same number of years that Superman has spent under the Earth's yellow sun, Due to have being augmented much more potent powers, Reign is considered one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse. **'Superhuman senses': All of Reign’s senses are heightened to greater than that of a normal human. **'Enhanced memory': As a Kryptonian, Reign‘s memory is greatly enhanced, allowing her to remember specific details of her birth and her creators. **'Solar energy absorption': Reign‘s powers are not dependent on the energy spectrum from the yellow sun, but she can fill her reserves with solar energy, augmenting her abilities, especially her heat vision. It is also possible that she can discharge all of the solar energy in her reserves. **'Super stamina': Reign can run or fight for long extended periods of time, and this aspect of her powers stem further than that of Supergirl. **'Accelerated healing factor': Sam's metabolism is tremendously enhanced by solar energy, allowing accelerated healing abilities and burning calories at a fast rate, making her practically immune to becoming overweight. ***'Contaminant immunity': Sam has an immunity to all forms of disease and contaminants. After absorbing Grace’s abilities, she became immune to all forms of Pestilence as well. **'Flight': Sam is able to generate thrust and propel herself through the air, often at supersonic speeds, much faster than she can travel by foot. **'Levitation': Sam is able to suspend herself in the air by floating. **'Super leaping': Sam is able to leap vast distances through the air, simulating short term flight. This ability is a combination of super strength and flight. Sam is also able to jump very high and generate enough force to smash through windows. **'Heat vision': Sam can emit focused energy beams of variable intensity and temperature from her eyes. Unlike other known Kryptonians, Sam's are bright and searing red; it also appears to be more potent. Her heat vision can also be used as lasers, rather than burning attacks. **'Invulnerability': Sam is essentially invulnerable to all Earthly weapons, with bullets simply ricocheting off her flesh. While fighting Supergirl, as a fully transformed Reign, though she was repeatedly staggered from all of the former's powerful attacks, she rather quick to recover and retaliate - emerging with no signs of even being hurt or tired at the end. Sam would later fare the same against J'onn who, despite the Martian's attempt to entrap Sam by miles beneath the Earth by phasing her through the planet's surface, was forced back above ground by the Worldkiller's thrashing movement as J'onn extended his intangibility over to her. ***'Self-sustenance': Due to the effects of a yellow sun, Sam's physical needs are greatly reduced or completely removed. It is unknown if a yellow sun's absence voids this aspect of her powers. ***'Atmospheric adaption': While Sam does require oxygen, her physicality allows her to survive while inhaling more harsh forms of it. ***'Longevity': As a Kryptonian, Sam's lifespan is considerably longer than a normal human and likewise ages much slower, and after absorbing Pestilence’s powers, she should be able to live for a near-infinite amount of time, almost never aging. ***'Electrosynthesis': Reign’s body creates her own power source, thus her powers are not reliant on the yellow sun. ***'Kryptonite immunity': Reign has a very high level of resistance to Kryptonite. This was proven when Lena’s supercharged Kryptonite was only able to weaken her. Although, with a concentrated dose, Krpytonite can still weaken her. Due to her evolving metabolism, Reign is becoming more immune to the crystals. ***'Temperature and elemental resistance': Sam can resist any temperatures, including heat and cold, as well as elements such as rocks and high levels of electricity. **'Super smell': Although she rarely uses this power, as an enhanced Kryptonian, Reign has the ability to pick up smells that are very far away or very subtle. She can also identify where the smell is coming from. **'Super vision': As a Kryptonian, Reign is able to see very far distances, presumably at peak human, or low superhuman levels. She is even able to see clearly in the dark. **'Electromagnetic spectrum vision': As a Kryptonian, Reign can see well into most of the electromagnetic spectrum. She can see and identify radio and television signals as well as all other broadcast or transmitted frequencies. Using this ability, she can avoid detection by radar or satellite monitoring methods. **'Microscopic vision': Although she has rarely used this power, Reign has achieved the ability to see extremely small objects down to the atomic level, and magnify objects for her eyes to see. **'Telescopic vision': Sam possesses''' the ability to see something at a great distance, without violating the laws of physics. Though limited, the exact extent of the ability is undetermined. In function, it is similar to the zoom lens on a camera. **'''X-ray vision: Sam has the ability to see through all objects with the exception of lead. **'Infrared thermal vision': Sam has the ability to see heat and cold signatures of people and other objects. Reign can also see with better acuity in darkness, and to a degree in total darkness. **'Super breath': Sam is able to exhale powerful gusts of air from her mouth which are similar to force winds. She can also cause the temperature of her breath to drop, therefore able to freeze nearly anything. **'Vocal alteration': As Reign, Sam usually speaks in a condescending reverberating manner, but by using her vocal alteration ability, she can turn her voice back to normal and vice versa. When using this power, the area around her throat glows a bright orange-red color. **'Super hearing': Sam has super-sensitive ears that can perfectly pick up sounds from miles away and even through structures. Sam can also make her super hearing selective, and after absorbing Julia’s abilities, she immune to loud sounds, and can switch her super hearing on and off. **'Super speed': Sam possesses the ability to move at super-sonic speeds, both through flight and on foot. Her speed seems greater than Supergirl’s, who despite being fast enough to intercept bullets, failed to evade the vast majority of Sam’s assaults, and even repeatedly outmaneuver the latter for the most part of their first battle. **'Superhuman reflexes': As Reign, Sam’s reflexes are so fast, she can respond to attacks within seconds, much faster than Supergirl can, as she has overpowered the latter in hand-to-hand combat repeatedly. **'Accelerated perception': When moving at super speeds, Sam is still able to take in everything going on around her, except much slower. **'Super strength': After her awakening, Sam's full strength was proven to be considerably greater than Supergirl’s, capable of feats like nearly overturning something as large as an oil tanker and punching away 31st Century artillery ordnance with apparent ease. While able to block some of Sam's blows, the repeated accumulation of hits that landed soon left Supergirl bleeding heavily and bruised all over, barely able to stand before finally falling into a coma and critical condition. **'Shockwave creation': By clapping her hands on stomping her feet with her super strength, she can create massive shockwaves, powerful enough to injure Supergirl. She can also use this to create a thunderclap effect, which generates so much force, it creates a large sound. **'Worldkiller link': The Worldkillers appear to have a link with each other using Reign as a nexus point. This is evident as no Worldkillers awoke until Reign did. Julia/Purity does not have children so this did not inhibit the development of her powers like Reign and only woke after Reign did. Along with the other world killers, Sam is able to create a full eclipse on Earth’s sun and generate a blue shockwave that was able to incapacitate Supergirl. Once Grace and Julia died their powers transferred to Sam, though Sam was able to apply both the Worldkillers’ powers further than they did respectively. ***'Sonic scream': After absorbing Julia Freeman's powers, Sam can vocally emit a focused, high frequency sonic scream that is powerful enough to knock a fully grown Kryptonian feet away into a wall. She has advanced with this power so that her scream is powerful enough to make Martian Manhunter bleed profusely out of ears, so much so he needed to be hospitalized. ****'Sonic inducement/sound projection': With a slight clench of her hands, Sam, is able to induce vertigo, vibration, and a sonic sound in her immediate vicinity, extending outwards omni-directionally. She has also used this power to create powerful sound shockwaves in conjuction with her scream. ***'Empathy': After absorbing Julia Freeman's powers, Sam is able to "see" into people, and is able to read peoples personalities, and look deep into their psyches. ***'Pestilence inducement': After absorbing Grace Parker's power, Sam can spread some kind of contagious virus that can kill any living thing she comes into contact with as seen when dozens of pigeons fell dead from the sky, when people at city hall started having nose bleeds before collapsing and when a plant immediately died upon being touched. According to Mon-El, it is 100% fatal. She has taken this power so far as she does not need complete physical contact with the organism, but just needs to be in the vicinity of it. She was even able to affect plants that were yards away from her. ***'Retractable claws': After absorbing Grace's power, Sam can grow her nails into yellow claws, sharp and dense enough to pierce Supergirl's invulnerable skin, and presumably any other being. Her claws can also induce pestilence when she grows her nails upon physical contact. Her nails are retractable, and can reform to normal size. **'Evolution': After absorbing Grace's powers, Sam can "evolve" into more powerful and potent forms of herself, including turning into diseases and creating new ones. She has used this ability to passively evolve her body in order to become more resistant to larger doses of Kryptonite. **'Telepathy immunity': Reign can resist psychic attack with ease, but this power falls short against more powerful telepaths such as Psi. **'Psychic inter-dimensional travel': According to Lena Luthor, Reign is capable of travel psychically between dimensions, while Sam is awake, Reign is in the dark valley and vice versa. Abilities *'Intimidation': Due to her willingness to spill blood unlike Supergirl, Sam, as Reign, can easily strike fear into the hearts of many humans, including Morgan Edge, Thomas Coville, and other criminal meta-humans like Leslie Willis and Psi. Even the highly skilled and courageous DEO agent Alex Danvers admitted the Reign has terrified her. It is clearly implied that these individuals have grown to fear Reign due to her publicly defeating Supergirl, who also shown small signs of fear after realizing the Worldkiller's true formidable power and her surprising near-invulnerability to Kryptonite. Weaknesses *'Split Personality': Due to being a Worldkiller raised on Earth since when she was a baby, Sam developed a dual personality disorder since fully gaining her powers. *'Lead': Reign, even with her X-Ray vision, cannot see through lead as she attempted locate Morgan Edge while he was hiding in his lead panic room. *'Kryptonite (concentrated amounts only)': Like other Kryptonians, Reign is vulnerable to all types of Kryptonite. However, due to being a Worldkiller, the rocks have little effect on Reign, as the D.E.O. found out after they attempted to use it to ambush her. But, she is vulnerable to a concentrated amount when interacting with her bloodstream. However, due to her constant evolving body, Samantha is becoming more immune to the Kryptonite to the point of becoming completely invulnerable. *'Red Sun Energy': Exposure to the Red Sun will make Reign the equivalent of a normal human on Earth. However, similar to Green Kryptonite, the said colored energy would appear to have a mitigated effect on her, since she was thrown back but otherwise retained her powers — not to mention most of their intensity — after getting exposed to a Red Sun grenade lobbed upon her by Alex. Victims *Jindah Kol Rozz *Leslie Willis/Livewire *Patrica Arias *Numerous unnamed criminals *Numerous unnamed civilians Indirectly *Julia Freeman/Purity *Grace Parker/Pestilence Gallery Promotional Image Reign first look.JPG|First look at Reign ''Supergirl'' Reign Supergirl 309.jpg|The Worldkiller, Reign. Samantha Ruby 301.jpg|Samantha prior to becoming Reign. Reign origins.png|Reign, as a baby, being sent away to Earth prior to Krypton's destruction. Samantha Ruby 302.jpg|Samantha and her daughter, Ruby. Samantha Arias meets Kara Danvers.png|Samantha meeting Kara Danvers for the first time. Samantha Arias Reign.png|Samantha becomes Reign. Reign mark.png|The mark of the beast. Supergirl meets Reign 309.jpg|Supergirl confronting Reign. Supergirl Reign first fight.jpg|Supergirl and Reign's first fight. Worldkillers dream 312.png|Reign, alongside Purity and a silhouetted Pestilence, appearing in Kara's nightmare. Reign Purity 312.jpg|Reign meets her "sister", Purity. Trivia *In the DC comics, Reign is a major Supergirl villain and one of five Worldkillers, which were biological weapons created by Zor-El to before being outlawed by the Krypton Science Council. Her origins were unknown even to her. *She is the first villain in the series where she is the main antagonist of her debut season where it also serves as her origin into a villain. *Unlike her comic book counterpart, she is a genetically enhanced Kryptonian who was raised on Earth under the name Samantha Arias. *Her role in the series is similar to Superman discovering who he is and visiting their fortresses. *During the mid-season finale, fans have pointed out that her first battle with Supergirl resembled The Flash's first battle with Zoom since in both of the battles, the villain easily overpowers the hero in front of the public. The only exception is that while Reign brutally beat Supergirl into a coma, Zoom snapped Flash's spine and left him temporarily paralyzed. *She is similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in that she has two distinct identities/personalities, one being good and sane and the other a vicious, misanthropic killer. In both cases, the dual identity is not initially known to the characters with whom the villains is friends with in their "normal" persona. **The above is also quite similar to Green Goblin as he appeared in the 2002 Spider-Man movie, with both also caring about their child (at least in their civilian persona), and opposing idealistic heroes in red and blue costumes (and also being able to fight them on almost equal footing). As Green Goblin is archenemy of Spider-Man, it is possible Reign is Supergirl's archenemy. *Reign is currently the first season main antagonist whose portrayal is acclaimed by both critics and fans, since the previous main antagonists (Non and Rhea) were poorly received. *In episode of Fort Rozz, Psi showed Reign's biggest fear is losing her daughter Ruby. *In the finale of season 3, she become a reformed antagonist. 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